Our creative spirit has a
tremendous capacity to play and possesses a tremendous energy to
create. However, it is very vulnerable and can be easily hurt if its
play is thwarted in any way. How it is hurt is quite simple.
Whenever its free spontaneous and innocent play is somehow thwarted
there will be a withdraw of the creative spirit in that area. How
big a withdraw and whether or not the creative spirit is able to
regain its ability to move freely in that direction again is
entirely dependent on the situation and how the creative spirit
perceives what has happened. Alternatively said, whenever the free,
spontaneous and innocent play of this creative spirit is stopped for
any reason other than the creative spirit dissipating the energy of
the experience there is the risk of the withdrawal of the sprit. As
such, to say this creative spirit is vulnerable is an
understatement. It is a very powerful yet very fragile entity.

In some ways you can say one purpose of this creative spirit having
a physical experience is to “toughen up” its resistance or, maybe
better said, to “grow up” and become adult and to become the
creative power that it is. However, more often than not, rather than
being “toughen up,” and/or growing up it simply withdraws because
another is not present to provide the nurturing it needs to process
what it feels and experiences. This creative spirit does respond
very much like a wounded child and this aspect of the creative
spirit gives rise to the concept of the wounded child within. But it
is not a child an does not need to grow up. It only needs to become
aware of its creative power, its incredible creative ability, and to
realize it can experience pain when its creativity is thwarted . It
is already mature. It has just never learned to use what it
possesses and is inherent to its being and learn to respond to life
in a way that does not thwart its creativity.

The issue we face is quite simple conceptually but very difficult
with which to deal practically. Our playful, vulnerable creative
spirit enters Physical Creation to have a physical experience. The
vehicle it uses for that experience is our body. It possess more
than sufficient energy to deal with life as it arises. However, the
creative spirit must grow into the body as the body grows and learn
how to use it. As we move into life, we collect many experiences
about life in our mind. But before we have sufficient information
about the time and place we find ourselves, our play and our
creative endeavors are somehow thwarted. Our playing being thwarted
in itself is not necessarily the issue although it can be. The more
significant issue is that early in life we do not have mature mind
and a sufficient set of experiences about life to know how to
properly respond. So we respond the best we know how based with the
mind of a child who has yet to know how to deal with life. The
response patterns we develop then stay with us our entire life
unless we change them to something more appropriate based on a
older, more mature mind.

As we grow into life, the experiences of life provide many different
types and kinds of pain and ways that our play is thwarted. In time
we are no longer free to play but begin to protect this creative
spirit and withhold this spirit’s unfoldment. It needs to be
realized that the experiences of life and the pain of the
experiences in life have a way of shutting down our creative ability
or turning off the flow of energy we need to create what we desire.
In response to the pain we experience, the free flow of this spirit
is channeled into ways of responding to the world to keep itself
safe and protected. This creative spirit begins to limit itself and
its movements and begin to move in directions that appeared to be
less painful and usually toward something more enjoyable. As it
explores life it develops beliefs about what is or is not safe and
it begins to respond to life based on those experiences and beliefs.

Our problem in dealing with our
belief structure and the habit it creates is often the response
patterns that hold this creative spirit bound were formed before
mind became conscious of itself. As a result, one cannot always go
back and deal with a conscious experience. Often one is forced to go
back and deal with the feeling that gave rise to the protective
response pattern. To mind that is very frightening for it doesn’t
really understand what it is facing. It requires stepping into the
unknown. Yet one of the habits we create is to learn to move towards
what is known and what will give pleasure. We habitually tend to
avoid the unknown and presents us with an uncertainty about life. So
mind avoids the feeling and often numbs the ability to feel by
shutting of a part of our ability to feel, or we create an addictive
response to suppress the feeling. In essence we end up putting our
creative spirit in a cage or prison of our own making and only we
can open the doors to that cage or prison.

Most of us have forgotten or, because of the pain involved, don’t
want to face why we built this cage in the first place.
Consequently, we never explore the cause of the pain we feel and
what it is trying to communicate. Rather, we only respond to the
fact we are being hurt. We do not explore why this particular pain.
Why the conditions in our life that give rise to this particular
pain existing as opposed to any other condition.

Most of us never come to realize the
gift of pain and few learn how use the gift that is presented to
us. Most simply try and numb it or protect against it. In any case,
we learn to choose what we know rather than face the uncertainty and
anxiety of the unknown. We tend to look to the certainty of the
pleasure we know rather than face the possibility of pain in the
unknown. As such we become reluctant to express certain aspects of
our being. As a result there are parts of our being that lie dormant
for it is not perceived as safe for them to come out and express
themselves. Additionally there are other parts that have been so
injured that they essentially lie dead and must figuratively and/or
literally be resurrected.

From an energy balance perspective, what happens is that the
experiences of life have a way of causing this creative spirit to
entwine and bind itself to a way of living life that makes life safe
for us but no longer serves us or serves what our creative spirit
would like to experience in life. Rather than freely allowing our
creative life energy to dissipate in the experience we have, we hold
it and keep it bound. The more we move in a given way, the stronger
the habit we create. In time, the way we choose to live life causes
us to form habits of which we may no longer be aware. These habits
become so strong it is very difficult to change them and they begin
to rule our life rather than conscious action.

In many ways our ability to create and its relationship to a mental
habit is analogous to the relationship of mass and energy. Modern
physics has taught us that mass can be viewed as the storage or
binding of a tremendous amount of energy. If you know how to do it,
you can convert the mass into energy. However, you need to free the
bound energy if you want to use it. In the same way energy can be
converted to mass to create a given form, the creative spirit within
your being can form itself into a given form for the purpose of
having a particular type and kind of experience. To free that
creative energy, one must free the energy from the form that has
been created. Yet,
energy and consciousness can be viewed as one and the same. We
can use conscious awareness and our belief structure to free the
creative energy if we know how and where to focus. In this regard,
our internal compass can be a great asset.

Our
belief structure, the composite of our memoirs, what and how we
think and believe, and the habits that belief structure creates
cause us to form, store and bind a tremendous amount of creative
ability and power. If we know how to change our belief structure and
break the habits we can release that creative ability. As a result,
rather than being free to consciously create, we do most of our
creation subconsciously and as a response to the world in which we
find ourselves. Few become truly proactive in their creative
efforts. Few ever consciously access the depth and breadth of their
inherent creative ability because of how our creative spirit becomes
bound by the past. In this regard, whatever creativity you think you
posses, you can be assured you can access orders of magnitude
greater ability. In fact, your creativity is truly unlimited in what
it can do for you. You only think you are limited. You only need to
know how to consciously access it and deal with what stands in the
way of its free and unfettered unfoldment.

In regards to consciously accessing and dealing with what stands in
our way,
one of the most useful tools we have is pain. If you explore
pain and what it is really communicating, you will come to find it
is a gift and is a warning or an alarm. It tells you when a limit is
being exceeded such that if you proceed some destruction or damage
will be caused to what gives rise to the pain. But that is not
necessarily bad. Rather it needs to be understood. When explored,
some pain will be a warning to back off and stop what is being done.
Otherwise, unwanted damage will occur. Other pain is only telling
you if you wish to proceed you have to remove the limit or boundary
that is keeping you restrained and giving rise to your pain. In both
situations, you face the same thing - a limit or barrier to the free
flow of your creative life energy. Pain only tells you that you are
exceeding that limit. The question is if you are willing to keep the
your energy contained within it or expand beyond that limit.

One of the more significant problems related to pain most of us have
is that as we grew into life, one of the more powerful habits we
created is that we learned how to endure a certain level of pain to
get a particular end goal or success but we never learn how to
freely flow with this creative spirit. School of course was one of
the more powerful ways we are programmed and drilled to learn to
endure for that success at the end and work to get what we desire.
As a result, one is rarely taught how to flow toward what they
desire to create and let what we desire unfold much the way a seed
planted, will germinate, grow into maturity and bear fruit and that
the seed only needs to be nurtured for it will grow itself. One is
not taught how to use pain in the flow process and understand what
it is telling you. Rather we just learned to endure and numb the
pain. Somewhere, some time and some place, each of us will need to
learn how to use the
gift of pain to know how to properly protect our vulnerable
creative spirit.